Google to start ranking faster mobile web pages higher in July

Google today made quite a revelation of its innovative project to improve higher its mobile results, it also reveals that page speed has been used in its search ranking for sometime now which has been largely for desktop searches. The big search giant says, starting from July 2018, mobile page speed will be a ranking factor on Google.

Google started labeling sites as “mobile-friendly” In November 2014 to indicate pages optimized for phones. Google then used few years experimenting with using the label as a ranking factor, ultimately pushing those changes in April 2015 and increasing the effect in May 2016. The label was removed in August 2016 as the company noted that most pages had become “mobile-friendly.”

Google now emphasize on the mobile friendly feature to encourage mobile pages to load faster.

Here is how Google explains it:

The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.

This innovation is a good push from Google to help speed up mobile web. The company rolled out its new Search Console to all website registered with it. The Search Console tools which help webmasters to analyze and site indexing on SERP, view analytics, peruse inbound links, remove and add content for crawling, monitor malware etc.

Although, Google will not offer a tool that will directly indicates whether a page will be affected by this new mobile ranking factor or not. Instead, the company points to three of its own resources that developers can use to evaluate their mobile page’s performance: Chrome UserExperience Report, Lighthouse, and PageSpeed Insights.

Additionally, this announcement doesn’t mention Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project. At its I/O developers conference last year, the company shared that AMP pages now load twice as fast from Google Search, and just last week the team announced that AMP URLs will be getting a makeover. It doesn’t look like implementing AMP is enough to get a boost from this upcoming Speed Update — Google wants developers to improve their mobile site performance across the board.

As a young entrepreneur and a webmaster in Nigeria, I love technology! As a result, and to earnestly contribute to tech awareness within individuals, I find the need to give digital-based insight of the technology world today, hence, making individuals well tech rounded and get the need to acquire technical skills.